Saed Hindash/The Star-LedgerZach Parise is the face of the Devils franchise -- both as the team's best player and for his clean-shaven look.

After the Devils’ Game 3 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers, Patrik Elias and Zach Parise crossed paths in the locker room before Parise turned around, stroked his clean shaven chin and yelled out, “I see you followed my lead.” Elias, sporting a barely-there five o’clock shadow, smiled and chuckled.

Is there a more blasphemous exchange in the midst of a postseason run? The Devils, winners of four straight games and Eastern Conference finalists, have ferocious forechecking, a legendary goaltender and a $100 million sniper. But their success this spring may be surprising if you consider that they are missing what has long been thought to be a key ingredient in May and June: the playoff beard.

It is not a locker room completely devoid of hirsute faces, but it does have more than its fair share of shorn whiskers and fresh stubble. It’s not exactly skating without a stick, but the Devils have shown so far that you can win in the playoffs without facial hair.

“There’s a lack,” Ryan Carter said. “Mine is genetic, I don’t know if everybody else’s is. That’s just a gimmick in the playoffs but there’s commitment on this team throughout, whether it shows in their beards or not.”

The playoff beard has become a beloved part of hockey, a visage paired together with a gritty and rough game. The New York Islanders of the early 1980s are credited with starting the tradition, a hairy group who sacrificed razors for four straight Stanley Cups. Since then, it’s grown into an annual rite of spring.

Tim Thomas wore a bushy lumberjack beard. Sydney Crosby’s came in patchy. Mike Commodore had the ginger fury. You could document Scott Niedermayer’s age by the amount of gray in his beard in his final years with the Anaheim Ducks, a far cry from the all-black beard during his days with the Devils.

“Every year, the playoff beard, everybody talks about it,” Adam Henrique said while wearing a thick goatee, harkening back to the days of Scott Stevens. “It’s something fun besides the game. There’s always interesting ones every playoffs.”

Ken Daneyko, whose beard and toothless grin might as well be associated with the 2003 Cup he raised over his head, says it’s reasoning is hard to pinpoint.

“You try anything,” he said. “Anything for bonding, anything for luck, superstition, call it whatever you want. That all goes into it, no question.”

But look around the Devils locker room and then wonder where the beards are. Martin Brodeur, whose contribution historically has been a soul patch — Daneyko explained that he told them that otherwise it would itch underneath his mask — is clean shaven. Elias had one but then shaved it off after he didn’t like the look.

Parise is the face of the team. He started the playoffs with good intentions but shaved his whispy mustache, all he could muster, after a few games and severe ribbing from teammates. He hasn’t gone back after the Devils started winning.

“He had a nasty mustache for a while but I guess he shaved it off because he was embarrassed to go out in public,” Travis Zajac said.

There are the traditionalists though. Zajac has a full beard. Ilya Kovalchuk’s would fit in during a Russian winter as well as a Jersey spring. Andy Greene’s has been commended as the best on the team. Adam Larsson’s is what you’d expect from a 19-year-old making his first playoff appearance.

“I think it’s all preference,” Daneyko said. “We probably did it a lot more and it was a little more prevalent during our good runs in the 90s and 2000s. But there’s still a few guys who are a little old school and like to grow the beard.”

“I think it’s as simple as sometimes it can be irritation, that would be the reason some don’t. Obviously some guys can’t [with a laugh]. It’s all preference. We had more of that old school mentality years ago. I think a lot more guys did it, but still not everybody. There was guys who would grow a goatee or a mustache. My last one obviously, I was getting old and it was getting gray and grizzly. But it was certainly a memorable time because it was my last one.”

For some there’s a good excuse — they just can’t. Ryan Carter is working hard to make the mustache work — growing a thick one over his upper lip that may get its own cult Twitter account if it ever sees a TV camera — but can’t grow a beard.

“I lack what it takes for a full beard,” he said sheepishly. “I’ve been calling my Dad once a day giving him heat for that.”

There are also internal influences. In 2003, Adam Oates, now an assistant coach with the Devils but then playing for the Anaheim Ducks, abstained from one based on his statistical analysis that despite all 16 teams growing beards, only one team would win the Stanley Cup in the end. That iconoclastic realization earned him a reputation around hockey as one of the game’s utmost “sa-beard-metricians.”

Perhaps with karmic justice, Anaheim lost to the Devils in Game 7 of the Finals.

“I think some of the guys are enjoying their time away from their razor for sure,” Carter said. “It’s good and it’s something that is around playoff hockey. It’s fun for the guys to jump onboard and whatever momentum or excitement that brings for us, it’s good for us.”

As for the idea that the Devils may be tempting the Hockey Gods? Says Greene: “Knock on wood.”